YouTube's parent controls allowed me to set "age appropriate content" sort of(my kids are older) disabled comments, remove ads with premium. But they never allowed me to remove shorts or recommendations either for myself or my kids because they want the addiction dial set to 11. The government have made a mess of things but the companies are far from innocent. It's a shame the govt went after age verification instead of consumer rights to disable all the crap. Very poorly advised. Big tech will come out of this stronger and more evil and will work out ways to target vulnerable people without logins.

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 3 points 6 days ago (2 children)

But they never allowed me to remove shorts or recommendations either for myself or my kids

Enhancer for YouTube works on your computer. YouTube ReVanced works on Android phones, if you want these features.

[–] shirro@aussie.zone 5 points 6 days ago (2 children)

These are unofficial workarounds for features that could be regulated if esafety had a clue and weren't working for the industry. Google could add options in acct settings and in family link. They don't because they make more profit by driving engagement.

Kids will now watch YouTube without logins,.lose their hand picked educational subscriptions and get lowest common denominator engagement bait on their front page. The ALP just handed kids over to the bad guys. I am furious. I will probably block YT via DNS now because the gov took my parental control away. They clearly don't give a fuck about my kids.

[–] Longmactoppedup@aussie.zone 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

For my youngest I use pipepipe on an android tablet.

No ads.

No feed / recommendations.

Just the channels I subscribe to.

The final straw with stock android apps was years ago with my eldest when it showed an add for women's g strings in the middle of a fucking educational video about cats.

[–] shirro@aussie.zone 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Yep. The ads are worse than the content. I am sure the government doesn't care. They love that industry almost as much as the gambling and mining industries. I was happy to pay family premium and have some portion of the revenue go to creators though I wasn't happy about the multiple price rises.

I would be using specialized apps if I had little kids but I gave my little kids ABC for Kids and a media library instead when they were young. They are older now and I want them to learn to be responsible media consumers with some assistance. I also want them to be able to use their settings across a wide range of devices. They have access to a large number of devices with an assortment of operating systems. A kiosk solution isn't what I am looking for. Youtube's family accounts and premium gave me everything apart from removing shorts and front page which I could do with browser extensions. Those last two are what should have been regulated IMO.

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I was happy to pay family premium and have some portion of the revenue go to creators

Yeah same. I was a super early adopter in fact, and paid for it back when it was called YouTube Red. But then in the wake of Elsagate, YouTube cracked down on a bunch of long-established good creators, cutting off small-time creators from any revenue, and introducing stricter algorithmic checks on bigger creators. That was the last straw for me, after years of them doing the wrong thing by creators by ignoring fair use and censoring valuably content. I cut off my Red subscription then and there, and started installing adblockers.

Today, I pay for Nebula to give back to some of the best creators on the site, as well as get some exclusive and early content.

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 1 points 6 days ago

I don't blame eSafety, to be honest. They can only do what the Parliament legislates for them to do. And Parliament has done a terrible job.

But yeah, they're definitely unofficial workarounds. I agreed wholeheartedly with your prior comment, and just suggested these workarounds as good options you might find useful for yourself, personally. (While you're at it, Sponsorblock, and potentially DeArrow, both of which are included as options in ReVanced or as separate browser extensions, are really great.)

[–] melbaboutown@aussie.zone 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I hope the search engine signin verification doesn’t make this annoying. I have no idea of the extent it affects the actual email address.

Context: An android I intended to use for Revanced requires a previous Gmail login to unlock the phone (although it’s brand new), and the sneaky workaround also hinges on the Gmail signin. (Though if done right it may not need a complete one. It depends also if it works on that phone.)

And it won’t make calls until unlocked so I can try to call from another phone with the IMEI number but if that doesn’t work… can’t use the phone.

If it’s too much of a stuff around I’ll just have to buy a secondhand unlocked android.